HANDS OFF APPALACHIA!: Occupy MTR Investor UBS

Illustration via William Isom, II

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The Historical Roots of May Day

May Day  originally commemorated Chicago's 1886 the Haymarket Massacre, when, during a general strike for the eight hour workday, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they dispersed a public meeting, and police fired on workers, killing several demonstrators and resulting in the deaths of several police officers, largely from friendly fire.

 "Mayday," was also used as a distress signal for aviators because it approximates the French term "m'aider", meaning "come help me!"

 May Day 2012:  Occupy Movement Calls for a National Strike

This past winter, police aggression against even peaceful demonstrators, recalling Haymarket.  Occupy Oakland especially  brought this to light during  during the attack on Iraqi war veteran Scot Olsen.   Now Janet Weil, a San Francisco activist with Code Pink has written a manifesto. "Why I Strike"   in support of Occupy Wall Street's call for a general strike May 1.

Occupy Appalachia Joins Strike, Protests USB's Role in Destroying Our Mountains

Closer to home, Occupy Appalachia has called for May Day actions against Swiss-owned wealth management services company Swiss Banking giant UBS  which funds and provides investment support and advisory services for ALL companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining:  Arch Coal Inc, Alpha Natural Resources, Patriot Coal and James River Coal Company.

UBS  Fails to Live Up to Its Own Guidelines

  In UBS' 2011 Annual Report [p 62] it states:

"we decided to further strengthen our environmental and social risk management (including human rights) by identifying controversial activities where we will not do business, or only do business under stringent pre-established guidelines. Therefore we will not knowingly provide financial services to corporate clients, nor will we purchase goods or services from suppliers, where the use of proceeds, primary business activity, or acquisition target involves the following environmental and social risks: Extractive industries, heavy infrastructure, forestry and plantations operations that risk severe environmental damage."

"HANDS OFF APPALACHIA!" points out  that the company should bring its actions in line with its own annual report, and stop funding mountaintop removal coal mining.

Coal's Assault on Dissent

While Atlantic Magazine is asking if coal is doomed:  the companies have actually continued their assault on protest, "hoping to combine the results of several recent court cases to significantly narrow the ability of citizen groups to block new mountaintop-removal mining permits in federal court,"as Ken Ward, Jr. noted.

Lawyers for Alpha Natural Resources outlined their strategy last week during a hearing before U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers, who is considering citizen group challenges to at least two permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Targets for Occupy UBS:

Targets for Occupy UBS include East TM (Chattanooga, Cookeville, Johnson City, Kingsport, Knoxville, Oak Ridge); Southwest Virginia (10 South Jefferson Street, Suite 1050, Roanoke VA 24011; Western North Carolina (Ashville) and Kentucky (Lexington).
138 Charlotte Street, Asheville NC 28801

Invitation for Others to Suppport Hands Off Appalachia

If you cannot attend an action, Occupy Appalachia organizers are asking that you call or email the UBS branches and the headquarters and ask that they change their official policy on MTR:

Knoxville, TN
865-329-1239
Steven L. Meadows, Executive Director
steven.meadows@ubs.com


Johnson City and Kingsport, TN
423-928-7144 (Johnson City)
423-246 7111 (Kingsport)
David B. Arnold, Vice President - Investments, Johnson City & Kingsport Branches david.arnold@ubs.com


Oak Ridge, TN
865-522-5183
Bryan Mayo, Vice President - Investments, Oak Ridge Branch
bryan.mayo@ubs.com


Chattanooga, TN
423-267-1813
Jefferson B. Cronan CFP, Executive Director, Chattanooga Branch
jeff.cronan@ubs.com


Cookeville, TN
931-528-5426
John Stephen Boots, Account Vice President, Cookeville Branch
steve.boots@ubs.com


Roanoke, VA
540-344 5571
Paul Higgins, Branch Manager
paul.higgins@ubs.com
www.ubs.com/branch/roanokeah

Lexington, KY
859-269 6900
888-390-6900
859-335-8100 (fax)
Matthew Fresca, Branch Manager
matt.fresca@ubs.com
www.ubs.com/branch/lexingtonlc

Asheville, NC
828-258 9860
Jerome Hornowski, Branch Manager
erry.hornowski@ubs.com
http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/branch/ashevillea8/

Right now haven't received the email contacts for the following. I'll add them, if I hear back from the organizers...

Washington, DC Branch
202-638-7090

Headquarters NYC
212-713-2000

Headquarters New Jersey
201-352-3000

Other Banks Are Complicit Both in Mining and Funding Coal-Fired Power Plants

The latest report on the reputational and financial risks of coal just released by RAN and Sierra Club omits USB, but ranks large banks as follows:

	Mountaintop Removal Grade	Coal Fired Power Plant Grade
Bank of America	C-	D
Citi	C-	D
GE Capital	D	D
Goldman Sachs	F	D (Cogentrix) / F (Other)
JP Morgan Chase	D+	D
Morgan Stanley	C-	D
PNC	C-	F
Wells Fargo	D	D

EPA Has Failed to Protect Public

 April 4, more than three years after the TVA ash spill,   EJ, filed  against the EPA on behalf of 11 environmental and public health groups  (Appalachian Voices, Chesapeake Climate Action  Network, Environmental Integrity Project)  "to undertake long overdue action to address the serious and widespread risks that unsafe disposal of coal combustion waste or "coal ash" poses to human health and the environment."

Some in Congress Would Like to Prevent the EPA from Protecting Public Health

Meanwhile, David McKinley’s (R-WV)  successfully attached a clause to the House transportation bill which would bar the EPA from setting enforceable safeguards for toxic coal ash.  It's another case of  favoring  power plants and other big polluters.  Supporters for the amendment included US Chamber of Commerce, the American Coal Council, the United Mine Workers, utility companies like Duke Energy, and the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. Transportation Secretary Ray  LaHood--a Republican member of the House before he was appointed by Obama in 2009-- called the bill, H.R. 4348, a "big Christmas tree..."Look what they've loaded it up with... Keystone, coal ash — none of it has anything to do with transportation."


Currently industry dumps toxic waste into unlined and unmonitored ponds and landfills that can poison our waters and our health.   EJ states that "At least 185 coal ash dump sites have contaminated water supplies, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency admits that 54 dumps, a major spill will likely cause loss of human life."  [504  was a typo according to EJ's Lisa Evans].

In fact in nearby Giles County, the ash the unlined ash dump is on the banks of the scenic New River upstream from public drinking  and the Concerned Citizens of Giles County are in the process of suing the developer Giles Partnership for Excellence.

May Day is the Time for the Public to Take a Stand

In this this of increasing partisan divide and economic disparity, maybe it's time to return to both of the latter meanings. As Nancy L. Mancias, co-founder of Code Pink wrote on April 26, "Many people have suffered and died over the past decade of economic injustice and wars. Let's remember the words of labor organizer Mary 'Mother' Jones, who lived in Chicago in 1886: "Pray for the dead, and work like hell for the living!'"

May Day: Stop Sharecropping: Occupy Journalism!!!

For April, Andrew Lih, Associate professor of journalism at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism asked his fellow journalists participating in the Carnival of Journalism to submit a video in which they talked about a "dangerous idea got pushing the boundaries of journalism."  So I thought, I'd combine his charge with my celebration of International Worker's Day.


May Day is not only young girls dancing around be-ribboned poles. The celebration started as a commemoration of Chicago's 1886 the Haymarket Massacre during a general strike for the eight hour workday.  Mayday, of course, also is "mayday" used as a distress signal for aviators because it approximates the French term "m'aider", meaning "come help me!"

And journalism needs help. Melissa Bell of the Washington Post writes about the Print Reaper--you know Grim's cousin, "only he wields a pen, which is, of course, sharper than a scythe." Well, my dangerous idea for journalism is stop sharecropping: if you're not getting paid, keep your work. Raise crowdsource funding and publish it on your own blog or at non-profit publication such as Facing South.

Hey, journalism professors and book authors, I'm talking to you. You who see Huffington Post as a way to drive traffic. Who are willing to write op-eds free-of charge for The Guardian or The New York Times.

Imagine if community theater replaced Broadway. That's what's happening. It takes time and money to write well and in depth. Yet, so-called citizen journalism is driving the value of our work down to zero, according to the Future of News-ers. And, frankly, pro-am "collaboration" takes advantage of the amateurs.

Kind of reminds me of the exploitation of student athletes by universities. Except the chances for a well-paid pro career are even more remote.

Someone's getting rich off our efforts, but it's not us. In early April, Facebook bought Instagram for one billion dollars. That means a two-years-old, 12-person photo sharing app had a valuation which exceeded the 161-year-old, 1,300-person, New York Times by $80 million.

So mic check:

Stop sharecropping!

We are the 99%!

Occupy Journalism!

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For their final project, Lih's students compiled a podcast summary and video highlight reel.  Responses came in from a variety of other journalists, such as:

• David Cohn (founder of Spot.us and founding news editor of the new project cir.ca)
• Jack Lail (MultiMedia Editor for the Knoxville News Sentinel)
• Marc Lavallee andMatt Ericson (Interactive News and Social Developer  and deputy graphics director, respectively at The New York Times)
• Edith Yang (Online Marketing Director at Buzzsmith Marketing)
• Cindy Royal author of Gendered Spaces and Digital Discourse: Framing Women's Relationship with the Internet)
• Steve Outing (who wrote the “Stop The Presses!,”) column for Editor & Publisher Online and now directs Digital Media Test Kitchen at the the University of Colorado)
• Dani Fankhauser (director of engagement for Flud social news reader app) and
• Mike Roe (Web Producer at Southern California Public Radio)

Die Zeit (Germany) Covers MTR protests!

Illustration by Arnd Wiegmann from "So macht man Kohle: Was die Großbank UBS dafür kann, dass in Nordamerika ganze Berge verschwinden." Ralph Pöhner. Die Zeit, April 26, 2012. Or, "That’s the way to make 'Kohle': UBS's role in making whole mountains disappear in North America" (the German word “Kohle” has two meanings: Money and also Coal)

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UPDATE: Translation posted by my friend artist, activist and farmer William Isom, II on April 30:

That’s the way to make 'Kohle': UBS's role in making whole mountains disappear in North America

It began with a mountain of letters and red hearts made out of paper: unknown people had placed them in front of the entrance of a UBS Branche in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“We love our mountains” was written on these letters, or “Your greed brought us here”. 3 Weeks later, on the 8thof March 2012 the next campaign took place in front of the UBS Building of Johnson City, Tennessee. It was a small campaign, a Reporter of Johnson City Press counted 40 People. Protesters knocked on the glas door holding signs saying “Better Invest in our Future” or “UBS finances Destruction” or “no coal”. An approaching Policeman send people away from private parking zones.

In Chattanooga and Oak Ridge, in Asheville or Lexington more campaigns against UBS are scheduled for the next days, rather small campaigns. It appears to be a regional conflict, it’s about protecting the environment, Mountains, Coal, something like that.

Looking at it from this side of the Atlantic Ocean, for instance from the UBS Headquarter at Zürcher Paradeplatz, only one fact seems to be gob smacking: There are UBS Branches in Places like Chattanooga, Johnson City, Asheville or Oak Ridge, who would have guessed? A universal bank , a global player. This corporate group a main financer of American mining, according to those letters and protest signs. And Swiss bankers seem to have become part of politics in Kentucky, West Virginia or Tennessee, somehow. In these mountains mining companies started to use brute mining methods. To get to the coal they simply blow off the mountain top, the cheapest method. Huge Komatsu-Trucks collect the boulder and cover the surrounding valleys with it. The rest of the mountain including the coal is ablated.

“UBS would never finance this kind of method in the Alps” says William Isom, Member of the NGO Mountain Justice in Kentucky. “Never, unthinkable something like that would be approved in Europe.

But the US are a big country, there are many remote places in these mountains, economically drained, with little job opportunities. But right here the major coal sources of the US are to be found. Since the eighties mining companies ablated 5500 square kilometers of hilly landscape in the Appalachian mountains, almost the size of Kanton Bern, and according to calculations by the US Government a 1000 kilometer of river disappeared. Groups trying to protect the environment came up with data stating that the explosive power used on one day equals the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Dozens of different species of animals and plants our threatened by extinction. The ground water around the mines shows too high levels of Arsenic, Lead, Barium and Manganese. The People in the neighborhood have to keep living in a place that quakes on the bottom, is covered by ash clouds and soon reminds of the landscape of the moon. Most people decide to leave their homes.

The business heavily relies on funds and here lies the weakness of mining companies:

They depend on banks that offer huge credit limits, like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, the Bank of America and UBS. So young protesters in Tennessee, Kentucky or Wets Virginia rather gather in front of Banks than in front of the iron gates of mining companies. “ By putting pressure on the creditors we slow down the mining companies” says Ricki Draper, member of Mountain Justice in Knoxville. And as a matter of fact several banks have already pulled out. Credit Suisse announced in September 2010, to quit financing and counseling those companies which do business in mountain top mining. The spotlight is on UBS now, being one of the few remaining banks with branches overseas. “Foreign Banks have no ties with our community”, “But we have to watch whole communities being turned into solitude” says Ricki Draper in Tennessee. It sounds like the echo of manager wisdom: each business is local, despite globalization.

The corporate management in Zurich took note of these circumstances. For 2 years the notion “Mountain Top Removal” found its way into the annual report in which UBS keeps promising an improved process in regards to examining diligence and the grants. According to an official statement on the 9th November 2010 the Bank intends “to engage to more watchfulness, reviewing to what extend companies build their business on MTR-mining and if they tend to reduce this method of mining over time.” It sounded like a promise”. Just the day before, on the 8th November, UBS granted a 200 million dollar credit to Massey Coal in Virginia, the leading MTR-Company in the Appalachian mountains. In the 151 pages long credit contract the notion MTR appears not even once.

Soon after, in January 2011, UBS Investment Bankers from Stamford and New York flew to Virginia, to handle and advise the Merger between Massey and Alpha Natural Resources, giving birth to a Mining giant owning a quarter of the US MT-mines.

Seven weeks later, beginning of march, UBS together with Deutsche Bank helped the mining corporation James River Coal with an acquisition granting a 375 million dollars credit. The passed year James River increased the production of MT coal to 986 000 tons, 350 000 tons more than 2010, 50 per cent plus. These numbers were researched by Rainforest Action Network; James River doesn’t want to comment on it. The UBS statement seems rather misleading. The SEC and Bloomberg numbers state clearly that in the passed year UBS was business partner with 4 of the nine biggest MT-corporations. Only a few weeks ago UBS renewed a credit for a big player in MT-mining, Patriot Coal in Saint Louis.

“UBS destroys our mountains” protesters say, “UBS go home”, you can hear in front of UBS branches. By the way the banks dilemma is that its employees perceive hostility from private customers due to the banks business deals. They face different and partly odd interest groups, amongst them groups such as the green Christians or a priest who founded a church against consumption. These groups use Facebook and other websites, pointing out, that UBS is the third biggest financier for the environment sacrilege in the Appalachian mountains, UBS also made number one.

Amanda Starbuck, observing the Energy and Finance Business for Rainforest Action Network, says that UBS doesn’t stick out anymore, today it is the Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley and PNC that stick out, when it comes to financing MTR.

But: Like UBS these banks have recently announced the same promises. The Bank of America announced to not prolong contracts with MTR-corporations. Citi, PNC and Morgan Stanley promised a stricter reviewing process. PNC and Morgan Stanley even announced to no longer finance corporations which do mainly business with MTR.

After all one can imagine that the citizenship and responsibility Reports of these banks in reality are rather meaningless. Where does responsibility begin in a global investment bank? When making deals with a corporation whose subsidiary company produces cluster bombs, deals with a resources corporation, whose copper mines release yellow acid into the Congolese river?

A Banker said: “ You always need to consider the regulatory circumstances in those matters”. In other words: It is about politics. It is no coincidence that the notion MTR appeared in the banks annual reports in the last 3 years. In Summer 2009 the Obama government started to tackle the problem MTmining. With the existing water protection laws they are trying to limit mining projects, new mountain blistering are examined more strictly. It is an ongoing struggle. The concerned states have no interest in putting a halt on the black of income. 3 Weeks ago the parliament of Tennessee put off a new law, forbidding the MTR technique.

National, regional or local: Which side should a global player take?

To come to a conclusion, the department of responsibility at UBS had several talks with environment organizations. From UBS point of view: No, we don’t destroy mountains. “UBS cooperates with mining companies world wide” says Christian Leitz, head of the department for responsibility.” But we have not financed any MTR project directly. In fact in Northern America you will find no mining company which exclusively does business with MTR. These companies have usually many divisions and locations, often on different continents. On the other side UBS has an investment bank , which acts globally; aiming to be under the top ten in regards to company transactions; the energy and mining business, from a global point of view, is one of the most important business sectors. And coal is a material with a future.

It is hard to believe, when listening to politicians or believing the media, rather talking about renewable energy; the facts show: Coal consumption will increase by a fifth within the next years, this is the estimation of the international Energy Agency. The number of Coal power plants in the USA increased since the year 2000 from 1000 to 1400.

Until 2020 Europe will have 80 more new built coal power plants, 3 times more then in the last decade.

The USA is, thanks to the big resources of coal, something like the Saudi Arabia of Coal. Who doesn’t want to take part?

It's Spring, Let's Drink Wine!

Pat and Dave from the Five O'Clock Meetup graciously opened their home for a blind tasting of Sauvignon Blanc. The twenty-five who attended brought at least 18 bottles of wine (some duplicates) and a selection of yummy appetizers. The picture above is from Amy. The montage below also includes photos from Peter and Sharon.

"OccuPeep D.C."

Photograph by Deborah Linsday of the Washington Post for Katherine Boyle's March 28 article, "Peeps Show VI: Power to the Peeps" which includes a gallery of other winners plus links to previous contests.

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 I've always been fascinated by dioramas, dollhouses and minatures, so, of course, I look forward to the Washington Post's annual peep contest. Besides, the candy's are so-o-o sweet, I can't imagine what else they would be good for. This year things got political when first place went to "OccuPeep D.C." by Cori E. Wright, 38, of Falls Church, VA, who built the entire project to scale after figuring out that "a Peep is 3.5 percent the size of an average man.” She included signs based on those actually there and even a few rats, because after entering for three years, she noticed that "you have to pay attention to tiny details to become a finalist.”

Free Tix to Naomi Shihab Nye & more @ Split This Rock Sun 3/25

Split this Rock says it's offering a limited number of first-come first-served free tickets for the 11:30 am - 1 pm by reading by Naomi Shihab Nye, Sherwin Bitsui, and Kathy Engel in the auditorium at Carlos Rosario International School (1100 Harvard Street NW).

Come early and help plan the 2014 Split This Rock, starting at 9:30 am.

Occupy the Supreme Court with Poetry: Money is Not Speech!

I'll be at the Supreme Court between 4:30 and 5:30. Want to join us on the sidewalk at  1 1st Street NE (between East Capitol and A Street NE).  We'll be performing a group poem of protest at the Supreme Court.

From Split This Rock:

As poets, we believe that only speech is speech, not money. We will join together at the Supreme Court to create a poetic form called a Cento. Please bring a line of poetry, yours or another's, that speaks to any of the following:
◦an idea being drowned out by the noise of paid political advertisements
◦the importance of multiple voices in public life
◦the celebration of all the ways we exercise speech in the public realm: poetry and art, the letter to the editor, the vote, the protest, the prayer.

The line should not exceed 12 words. Write your line on a piece of paper and include the name of the poet, your name (if not using your own work) and your home town. Raise your poetic voice in a true act of free speech!

Feel free to bring a sign, but no poles larger 3/4" around ...

Tonight, from 7:30-9:30 pm the FEATURED READING: Homero Aridjis, Carlos Andrés Gómez, and Venus Thrash in the auditorium at Carlos Rosario International School (1100 Harvard Street NW).

Split this Rock 2012

Photo of poet and activist Sam Hamill from an interview at poet Rebecca Seiferle's (email) bieenial oline magazine, The Drunken Boat.

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About to drive into DC to Thurgood Marshall Center for Service and Heritage (1816 12th Street NW) to register for the third biennial Split This Rock Poetry Festival (Poems of Provocation  and Witness) before heading over to a Tribute to Sam Hamill & Poets Against War at the True Reformer Building (1200 U Street NW) with Sarah Browning, Martín Espada, Sam Hamill, and Marilyn Nelson a 2:00 p.m.

Before there was Split This Rock, Sam Hamill brought us Poets Against War. Join us as we pay tribute to this visionary man and the life-changing movement he launched. An outspoken political pacifist, in 2003, declining an invitation to the White House, Hamill founded Poets Against War, compiling the largest single-theme poetry anthology in history, and galvanizing tens of thousands of poets to speak for peace. Sam Hamill also co-founded, and for 32 years was editor at, Copper Canyon Press, one our most influential poetry presses. The author of more than 40 books of poetry, essays, and translations, Sam Hamill is a model for the poet as public citizen. Poets who are activists in Split This Rock and the Poets Against War movement will read their own poems inspired by Hamill, followed by Hamill reading his own poems of provocation and witness.

UPDATE:  On June 19, Blog This Rock posted a transcript of the tribute to Hamill by one of my favorite poets, Martín Espada and another from June 25 with poet and translater William O'Daly.

And I hope to catch the last part of the 11:30 to !:00 p.m. presentation on "Poetry as Activism, Activism as Poetry: Poetic Interventions in the Public Sphere" by Ken Chen, Jennifer Karmin, Philip Metres, Mark Nowak, and Jonathan Skinner in the True Reformer Board Room:

How can poets mobilize poetry as a change agent? These poets demonstrate the ways that the arts can contribute to the defense of the environment, workers, and oppose war. Philip Metres will discuss the ways in which projects such as Peace Show (Cleveland) and the “Stories of War and Peace oral narratives project” have become counternarratives to war. Jonathan Skinner will present how engaged poets have responded to environmental catastrophe, in particular, poets' responses to the 2010 BP deepwater well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Jennifer Karmin will present images from her street performances Revolutionary Optimism and 4000 Words 4000 Dead. Ken Chen will talk about his activism and work around the Asian-American Writers workshop. Finally, Mark Nowak’s "Imaginative Militancy and Trade Union Poetics" will examine his collaborations with global trade unions in recalibrating the role of the poetry workshop.

I just wish I could clone myself as there are plenty of other offerings going on simultaneously. For instance, over at Hamiltonian Gallery (1353 U Street NW), a new venue this year, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Lisa C. Moore, and Dan Vera are talking about Political Publishing: Building Community, Solidarity, Liberation

All political liberation movements must struggle to bring forward suppressed ideas. This was true in 1847 when Frederick Douglass first published the abolitionist North Star, and is still true in 2012 as the NYPD arrests the operators of Occupy Wall Street’s livestream. Three publishing veterans will speak about their struggles, strategies, and successes, ranging from the 1970s through today, in bringing political art to public spaces. They’ll ask audience members to share their experiences and new developments in political publishing.

More events follow at various venues with featured evening readings in the auditorium at Carlos Rosario International School (1100 Harvard Street NW).  Tonight's is Douglas Kearney, Kim Roberts, and Sonia Sanchez, to be followed by an open MIC reading at Bus Boys and Poets (2021 14th Street NW at the corner with V Street).

Hope to see some of you there!

Virginia Festival of the Book

Photograph of  Homero Aridjis from City Lights Publishers.

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For those of you lucky enough to be in Charlottesville today, may I recommend several events at the Virginia Festival of the Book?

At noon in City Council Chambers (605 East Main Street), Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville, UVA hosts Architecture prof John Quale  discussing his work on making affordable Prefab Housing. Quale is author of Sustainable, Affordable, Prefab: The ecoMOD Project, due out from the University of Virginia Press April 25, 2012,, ISBN 978-0813931524

Quale and his students at the University of Virginia, working with colleagues in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and with affordable housing providers, have created four designs for environmentally sensitive affordable dwellings. The houses, built with modular units and/or panelized building components, include a two-unit condominium, a post-Katrina home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a historic renovation with accessible addition, and a townhouse configuration that can be replicated and mass-produced for Habitat for Humanity. Each house pays attention to its site and incorporates sustainable materials and systems such as solar hot water, rainwater retention, and strives for zero energy load.

At 2:00 p.m. at the Student Bookstore on campus (1515 University Avenue0 Lynn Coffey (Backroads: Plain Folk and Simple Living), Phil James (Secrets of the Blue Ridge: Stories from Western Albemarle), Paddy Bowman (Through the Schoolhouse Door: Forklore, Community, Curriculum) and Saundra Gerrell Kelley (Southern Appalachian Storytellers) share stories from Appalachia.

At 7:00 p.m. at the The Haven (112 W Market Street), my friend ballad singer Elizabeth LaPrelle, along with her fellow musicians Alexia Smith, James Leva, Danny Knicely and Aimee Curl celebrate the life and music of the late Mike Seeger, along with author  Bill C. Malone (Music from the True Vine).

And I can only see part of this because at 8 p.m.  Rita Dove translates, as Mexican poet and environmental activist Homero Aridjis reads from his work in Spanish at the Harrison Insittute on campus ( 160 McCormick Road.  City Lights Publishers of San Francisco will be publishing the second bilingual edition of Aridjis's poems in November: Time of Angels/Tiempo de ángeles,  (translated by George McWhirter).  In 2010, City Lights published Solar Poems/Los poemas solares by the same translator.  Here's an 1998 article by Dick Russell (email), "Poetry in Motion:  Homero Aridjis, Mexico's environmental conscience, fuses literature and activism."

Donate to SAMPLER

Make a tax deductible donation designated for SAMPLER to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coaltion at RAZOO.com

SAMPLER (Southern Appalachian Media Project for Literacy on Environmental Renewal)

Photo of Joaquin Alvarado, senior vice president, digital innovation, American Public Media from the Knight Foundations blog.

February 20-21 I got to attend the 2012 Knight Media Learning Seminar, thanks to a travel grant from the Alliance for Appalachia and housing and wining and dining by friends who teach at Florida International University. I even got to meet DigiDave (David Cohn) after all these years of being friends online.

In preparation for the Seminar, I'd been working on putting together a project I've dubbed SAMPLER: Southern Appalachian Media Project for Literacy on Environmental Renewal.  You can make a tax deductible donation designated for SAMPLER to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coaltion at RAZOO.com  (which takes a smaller cut than paypal or even the non-profit, justgive.org.)

We're working to strengthen regional coverage by creating an alliance of  journalists and citizens to provide in-depth reporting on regional topics including sustainable development and transition from dependence on the mono-economy of coal mining, especially the destructive practice of mountaintop removal, as well as a mechanism to crowd source such efforts and critique coverage that is biased or stenographic.

The Challenge for Information in our Region

Many areas in Southern Appalachia are covered  only occasionally by the national dailies, often with no real feet-on-the-ground understanding of the complexity of local issues.  Regional papers providing balanced coverage tend to cover one state, although the problems are endemic.  Citizens often don’t understand the difference between pr, spin and good journalism.

We plan to do real journalism

We're taking our definition from the Society of Environmental Journalists and want citizens to be able to gain the knowledge they need for meaningful civic engagement and the skills to create and publish  stories, photos and videos of their communities.   Journalists will be able to cover topic they could not address as meaningfully alone. The project will use a website, twitter, facebook and other social media to provide content to national media.

Our Allies

The Alliance for Appalachia (and its twelve member groups) and the Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of Southern Exposure and Facing South have already expressed interest in being our first partners, as has the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of KY.  In addition to journalists, we plan also to work with  other citizens groups, local libraries, schools and colleges and legacy media organizations.

We are also in the process of applying for associate membership (due to the small size of our budget) in The Media Consortium, whose active projects include funded collaborations on coal, campaign cash and the occupy movement.

Jeff Deal, IT specialist for Appalachian Voices has been helping us with mapping programs.


Existing Resources

Existing projects which can serve as resources/interface include Spot.Us and the  Public Insight Network. We're want to pursue membership in the Investigative News Network and the Society of Environmental Journalists.  We've approached folks at The American Independent and would like to work with the new non-profit taking over NewsTrust, once the transition announced sometime in March.

Tell us your ideas for SAMPLER

Do you have a story you'd like to read about or write?  Do you know of a resource or ally we should contact?  Add something in the comment section to this post or write to CommunityPoweredReporting (at) gmail (dot) com.

Dendron Considers Coal-Fired Plant (again): Short Term Benefits versus Long Term Effects

Photograph of Beth Roach, guest writer for this post.  My friend from Surry  County, Virginia, she is fighting the proposed  coal-fired electric plant in the town there of  Dendron.   She says she was privileged to be born and raised in this special place called Surry, that the ability to explore the wilderness, play outdoor athletics, and swim in the James River strongly influenced her life.  It was such inspiration from her surroundings that led to her career encompassing historic interpretation, environmental education, and natural resource conservation. She descends from the Nottoway Indian Tribe, which she is an enrolled member.

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Monday, March 5, citizens in Surry County will again be asking Dendron Town Council to block Old Dominion Energy Coop (ODEC)'s proposed  coal-fired electric plant that will overshadow the tiny town (population 200) at a  time when other states are deciding that new coal-fired plants are NOT a good idea.  As scientist Mark Jacobson  has written:

The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants.

And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all....

This follows on a hearing before the Surry County Planning Commission on February 27, which my friend in Surry, Betsy Shephard critiques:

One of the things that came out of last week's Planning & Zoning hearing (besides the fact that out of 350 attendees, only 7 residents spoke in favor of the coal plant....more on that another day), was that finally there would be an official recommendation that the Town of Dendron commission a 3rd party study.

I asked another friend, Beth Roach, who attended the the hearing to write a guest post on what happened.  She says the views expressed here are her own, yet she hopes that many others will consider both sides of the argument and listen to their consciences...and their hearts.

So, I now turn this page over to Surry native Beth Roach..

~:~

 All I ask is for them to consider both sides. The powers that be in Surry have made it no secret that they are through hearing arguments and ready to vote, pass, and cash those checks. Numerous testimonies by local residents, environmental non profit groups, and regional neighbors have fallen upon deaf ears. While a lot of locals have been a part of the fight for several years, there are others who are joining the opposition everyday. They are dismayed at the harmful effects that this process - from mountain top removal to coal combustion to fly ash storage - creates. They have difficulty understanding why the decision makers don't take this information seriously. The short term benefits are risks, speculations, projections, and assumptions. The term "state of the art technology" has been ODEC's flagship phrase to assure people that no harmful effects will exceed the government's regulations. This isn't good enough. There are many case studies that disprove this logic. I bet this approach has been used every time a plant has been built. Yet, each plant eventually has its problems. Safety records are well kept secrets; ask anybody who has worked at a power plant. They can tell you that "hiccups" very rarely make the paper. Unless ODEC has some super powered crystal ball with a %100 success rate, they can't forecast the future. Nor does this approach address the known problems associated with the amount of pollution that IS allowed under current regulations. What does it boil down to? We can show empirical evidence about why and how these emissions are so harmful. We can demonstrate how the air, water, and land will suffer throughout time. We can plead by reminding them that we are a part of the same community. That to serve the earth IS to serve man. Yet, we are forced to sit back and watch this coal plant move forward as if this stuff doesn't matter. Is it that more environmental education at a young age is needed? I believe so. An enormous amount of evidence has been presented, yet if people don't have the foundational knowledge of how this relates to the community at large then the evidence won't matter to them. Perhaps they do understand the science and chose to ignore it? I don't have a cure or a lesson plan for that problem. My closing thought comes from my mother, a reading teacher, and my aunt, a media specialist (modern term for school librarian) for Surry County Schools. Both want to share this piece of wisdom from the Lorax to the planning and zoning commission, to ODEC, to the board of supervisors, and to the Dendron Town Council: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

Zen and the !@#Oof!* of Journalism Impact

Illustration from Rio Carnival Services.  Over a year ago DigiDave David Cohn) decided to revive the idea of a group of journalists getting together once a month to write in depth about the same topic, directed by a different host each time. Steve Outing, February carnival host publishes a roundup  with links to  posts by my fellow carnies. 

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For the February Carnival of Journalism, our host Steve Outing asks,

What emerging technology or digital trend do you think will have a significant impact on journalism in the year or two ahead? And how do you see it playing out in terms of application by journalists, and impact?

The first definition of  "impact" in the dictionary is "collision" not "effect." 

When Steve raised his question,  I had visions of the Hadron Collider, of accelerating particles banging into each other at great speed "in hopes of grabbing a piece of the primordial fire, forces and particles that may have existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang," as physicist Dennis Overbye put it in the New York Times.

For particles substitute tweets and facebook posts and cell phone text messages and pictures and videos, all coming at journalists faster and faster. 

Rather than trying to predict the next killer app, let me give an example of how twitter has democratized the news, not during the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement, but earlier in time and closer to home.

Twitter and the Appalachian Winter of December 2008.

We've always had trouble in this region getting the news out except in the case of mining disasters where lots of folks die.  Right now, we're coming up on the fortieth anniversary of the Buffalo Creek flood.  125 died after the coal company turned down the sheriff's offer to warn people to get to higher ground when the rubble used to dam Buffalo Creek  started to fail to hold back 132 million gallons of  coal slurry.

Then in  Martin County Kentucky we had another sludge spill on October 11, 2000,  which dumped 300 million gallons. Somehow no one died.  As in 1972, the sheriff was taking orders from the coal company, this time deputies turned away media on the road leading  in to the flooded area.   Although there were reports in the Lexington and Martin County papers and on their websites (and in the New River Free Press, which I authored)  the New York Times waited to write about the spill  until Christmas Day that year.

You might not  recall reading about it.  After all, by then it wasn't really news.  Compare that to the coverage of 11 million tons of oil spilled in 1989 by the Exxon Valdez and the images that it still brings to mind.

How twitter changed things

December 22, 2008,  525.2 million gallons of coal ash sludge  at TVA's Kingston coal-fired power plant ruptured the dike of a 40-acre holding pond and covered 400 acres up to six feet deep, damaging 12 homes and wrecking a train.

This time new media and citizens in the area were able to amplify their reports by tweeting.  I remember, at first, the moderator on a coal list serve chastised me for posting the links.  Then, a story appeared in the New York Times by December 24.  The list moderator apologized.

There's the old saying about a tree falling in the forest and, of course, a lot of trees are still falling without the larger world hearing.  There are still plenty of stories that are important to tell, but which haven't accumulated enough quantum mass to reach a broad public.

SAMPLER:  A case of digital journalistic optimism

Like Steve, I'm a "digital optimist."  There are many emerging apps that journalists are embracing, as evidenced by those written about by my fellows in the Carnival and discussed this past week at the Knight Foundation's Media Learning Seminar. That's why I've started work on a new media alliance for our region:  SAMPLER--Southern Appalachian Media Project for Literacy on Environmental Renewal.

We plan to strengthen regional coverage by creating an alliance of  journalists and citizens to provide in-depth reporting on regional topics including sustainable development and transition from dependence on the mono-economy of coal mining, especially the destructive practice of mountaintop removal, as well as a mechanism to crowd source such efforts and critique coverage that is biased or stenographic. You can read more on SAMPLER here. You can make a tax deductible donation designated for SAMPLER to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coaltion at RAZOO..

With  SAMPLER, we're not waiting for the next killer app, although, should it arise, we'll figure out how to take advantage of it.  Rather, we're looking to find new ways to convey information and news by using existing platforms and human networks.  You know, friends, neighbors, libraries, local citizens groups, email lists.  I'd say mobile phones, but we have lousy reception many places in Appalachia.

What the Big Bang theory means for digital journalism

Steve urges how it's important not be "caught blind-sided, again."   An older friend tells me she always remembers what Dear Abby, or perhaps Ann Landers,  advised when someone was afraid it was too late to pursue a new path:  time will pass whether you make changes or not.

The Big Bang Theory posits a universe starting  small, hot and dense, which has since expanded into something vast.  We're finite individuals and it's tempting to get overwhelmed   trying to figure out what's coming next.  In such vastness, though, there is also space to choose, room to chill.

Good Night, Irene

Dear Irene,

Was this picture taken in your office?  Maybe at home, but I'm guessing from the style of phone  it's at West Virginia Wesleyan. Frostburg used the photo for your reading in  September. Did you help them pick it out? It looks to me like a black and white version is used in part by the Intermountain in Elkins, so I'm guessing your family likes. So do I.

I did a little research and found out that you're holding a broadside of your poem, "Homage to Roy Orbison" which came out in 2009, after you published it Appalachian Heritage and in your fifth collection, Vivid Companion, in 2004.

Like Roy's, your

sense of form
shapes up this shard-filled life.

*

February 4 I wrote up a little piece telling folks the  news that you were gone.  Talbott Funeral says it will be receiving friends from four til nine tonight and it's already 3  p.m.  I could drive the four plus hours to Belington and still make it if I leave within an hour, but I haven't gotten any work done today, since I've spent the last four hours thinking on you.

I haven't got any work done and they're still blowing up our mountains, (Doh, of course nothing has miraculously changed since Saturday). I'm still looking for a community fund to apply for a Knight grant to  train more voices in our region  to tell their stories.  And  to interest the national press in better explaining what's going on.  Knight's  "live chat" for the grant is tomorrow at noon, just about when folks will be in the midst of the celebration of your life.  I could slip out, even though I don't own a laptop.  Google tells me the library over on Elliot is open all day and has net access computers.  I just liked  the library's page on facebook. 

I could drive the nine hours round trip, meet your family and friends.  Even walk around town and imagine your childhood.  Ask directions to the farm. But besides the grant, Dendron needs help stopping a new coal plant and in Giles they're still dumping ash on the banks of the New. And I've got pitches to write for The Guardian, which hasn't published me since December.

But you're a higher priority.

*
That song Leadbelly made famous  echoes in my mind.  Not the verses, mind you--the context is off--but the chorus:

Good night Irene
Good night Irene
Good night Irene
I'll see you in my dreams.

Makes me wonder what you thought of that song?  It's been recorded since by so many folks from The Weavers and Johnny Cash to  Michelle Shocked and Tom Waits.  Heck I was just now reading that even Raffi has a version.

I can't  ask you anymore in person--or in letters or facebook--unless I imagine your reply.  And that  isn't usually my nature.  Although it  would make an interesting writing prompt. The Gazette says they're burying you tomorrow.

*

And, even if I don't make the four-plus hour drive, I plan to sit shiva for at least the next week.  It's not as if  you were Jewish, nor am I close enough kin as it's usually defined.  But, that phrase comes to mind as an explanation: kindred spirits.

I thought about how I'd say we're connected, when I was searching images on Google to find a photograph to use at the top of this post. That word "connected" came to me when I found the photo at  a review of Jayne Anne Phillips Fast Lanes on Critical Mob.  It was tucked away on the tab labelled "connections," not the one marked "influences."

I can't claim that you influenced my writing. I hadn't read enough of you, even though West Virginia named you poet laureate years before we met in Charleston. I was off reading Bill Stafford, who doesn't write anything like me, except in the sense that all three of us were (and I am) writing from a set of common concerns, if not backgrounds.

*

Thanks to Vic, I'm listening to you reading three of  your poems from that October when I last saw you:

• "Homage to Hazel Dickens"
• "At 24"
• "Sunday Morning, 1950"

I'll research later and try to add links to written versions or if I can't find any, I can check with your sister, Eileen Martin and see how to get permission to transcribe them here. But until then,  folks can listen here:

(I hadn't noticed when Vic posted it to his blog last April, but the West Virginia Book festival posted it in a remembrance. )

*

I'm also listening Llewellyn McKernan interview you at the West Virginia Writers Summer Conference:

• your approach to how to start writing writing memoir, how she adapted her draft to write essays to be recorded on NPR and the feedback loop to the memoir
• your  take on the status and history of the development of Appalachian literature from the times of Louise McNeill  and James Still, and
•  your thoughts on writing process and teaching creative writing.

Just wish I had known about it before the Book Festival.  I might have asked you to continue the discussion, either when we were sitting on that bench together or during your reading when you asked for questions from the audience.

*

So, Irene, think of this as a wordy poem for you without line breaks.  Or NaNoWriMo by a poet and ten months early (Jeanne Larsen asked me Thursday night at Hollins, was I ever going to write a novel.)

Don't reckon I'll have more time to write you today.  I've been sitting here now, pushing aside other things.  And now it's been a good five hours and I've never even taken a break to get something to eat. The emergency Lemon Luna Bar from my purse is long gone. The last bit of  Lightlife organic Tempeh smells like it's  several days past turned.

So I don't reckon I'll have more time to write you today. But, if not, goodnight, Irene.  I'll hear you in my dreams.

Irene McKinney, ¡Presente!

Photo of of Irene (right), Denise Giardina and Jayne Anne Phillips at the 2010 West Virginia Book Festival accompanied Greg Moore's Charleston Gazette post:  "Live blog: Sunday at the West Virginia Book Festival."


This will be brief and I'll write more later.  I just wanted to let folks who loved Irene know, if they hadn't heard the sad news. The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine hasn't even posted the news yet at her bio, as I write this. The service is 11 a.m. Wednesday at Talbott Funeral Home in Belington,, WV (Barbour County), where Irene was born and grew up on her family's farm. That's about 2 1/2 hours from Charleston, 4 hours from here.


Phillips, who comes from Buckhannon, WV--where McKinney taught--told the Charleston Gazette,

She is a great loss to the state of West Virginia...She made West Virginia real, sensory and important in all its timeless variety, the land, farms, the people and animals, the rituals. She knew the meaning of home place.

I last saw Irene McKinney that Sunday in October 2010. Before her reading, she sat next to me on one of the benches in the cavernous Charleston Civic Center, talking about how excited she was to start a new low residency MFA Creative Writing Program at West Virginia Wesleyan and asked if I had any suggestions for faculty. I told her about Katie Fallon, whom I knew from her time at Virginia Tech. Irene's announcement followed the first week in November.

The program offers interested writers the opportunity to explore the connection between place and identity, focusing on their home area, one of the field study destinations, such as Ireland, or the Appalachian region itself. The program will officially launch in July, 2011 with a three-day literary festival, and the deadline for applications is March 1, 2011.

Irene was so approachable, so enthusiastic, treating folks as her equal. Outspoken and ironic, she often repeated the words which can be found penned in the introduction to the 2003 anthology "Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia."

I'm a hillbilly, a woman, and a poet, and I understood early on that nobody was going to listen to anything I had to say anyway, so I might as well just say what I want to.

Or in the poem "At 24",

"I don't know who I am, but you can't have me."

I had only met Irene once before, when I got to participate with her and Denise Giardiana as part of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition's West Virginia Writers MTR project. I already knew Denise from Hindman and Jeff Mann from VirginiaTech, as well as Chris Green and Edwina Pendarvis, who had edited an anthology that included one of my poems, as will as Diane Gillam Fisher, whom I had just met that March at the Appalachian Studies Association conference. The project was where I met Katie, Bob Henry Baber and Rob Merritt.

UPDATE 2/7/2012  Good Night, Irene

"Dark Wednesday" : Proposed internet laws antipiracy or anti--freespeech?

Illustration is a screenshot from Mozilla.

January 18, websites are joining the Electric Frontier Foundation in calling for an end to current internet blacklisting legislation S. 968 PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and  H.R. 3261 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. Under the current drafts, courts could order credit card firms, online payment companies like PayPal and advertising networks to stop doing business with those websites. They could also order search engines to stop linking to them and internet service providers (ISPs) to block their customers from accessing them.

Sounds like China?  No, we're talking about the USA.



Currently sites must remove specific copyrighted content if presented with a properly filled out DMCA takedown request. The notices require that the complainants must identify exactly what pages the content is on, and  prove that they are indeed the owners of the content. Even then, this process is often abused according to the Electric Frontier Foundation.

SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content.  Instead they focus on the censorship of links to entire domains.

Thus, if the AG served a site, it would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. Does this sound like free speech?

Think not?  Then join us and write and  call your Senators and Congressperson  to tell them to stop this legislation.

And to read about how to particpate in other ways, see this excellent rundown by Ars Technicha (h/t to Dan Radmacher)

Floyd Radio Show

January 7, 20 12, while  I was down at the LaPrelle's in Rural Retreat for the Big House Crafty Week, I was invited to participate in Season 1, Episode 5 of the Floyd Radio Show.  Beside helping with the final re-write and participating in some of the group skits, I  read my poem "Green Beans"

UPDATE:  The Floyd Country Store now has archived podcasts on its website.  You can hear me read "Green Beans  at 22:21.  In the above picture, Anna is wearing the dress she made during Crafty Week (from an original pattern.)  It's emerald green French eyelet lined in a gold-yellow.

Tanner Cultural Center: A Legacy to Preserve and Celebrate

In April 2010, a tornado ripped through Newport, Tennessee, damaging the roof of the Tanner Cultural Center. Although money to conduct repairs was distributed to the City through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to William Isom II and Friends of the Tanner Cultural Center, the City is now talking about demolishing the center.  This despite a the National Trust’s Rosenwald Schools Initiative to save the remaining Rosenwald Schools, of which Tanner Center is one.  Not to mention the National Rosenwald Schools Conference: 100 Years of Pride, Progress, and Preservation to be held at Tuskegee University in Alabama June 14-16, 2012.

 We need to ask that the City of Newport act as responsible stewards for this beloved community space of such great cultural significance. Won't you join me before January 10 by writing Scott Collins newportadm@newporttn.org or calling 423-623-7323 ext 18 and asking that the City of Newport instead proceed without further delay on the needed repairs and clean up of the center. (Please send a cc of your email to Issom william@800northfourth.com.)

Constructed in 1924, as a Rosenwald School with local funds and a donation from Sears-Roebuck magnate Julius Rosenwald, to serve the educational needs of the Black students in Cocke County, the Tanner Building is special because of its status as a surviving East Tennessee Rosenwald School and its utilization as a community space for the Black and rural populations of Cocke County.

There are many surviving alumni of the Tanner School living and working in the neighborhood in which the building is based. Groups that have been displaced from this structure include; AA, Families First, East Tennessee Human Resource Agency, Clean Water Expected in East Tennessee, Community House Cooperative, Head Start, The Farmers' Market, and Veteran's Affairs to name a few. The building also provided meeting space for other groups, community events and computer lab access to the neighborhood.

As noted in the the Cocke County Heritage Development Report from 2008 conducted under the direction of Dr. Carroll Van West, the school is a "legacy to be preserved and celebrated."

Let's Remember Mary C. Snow: An Open Letter to The Charleston Gazette

 Photo is from a screenshot of  WCHS television's video.

*

Thomas Carlyle is reputed to have written, "Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers."

As a lover of your newspaper, that's why I was disappointed today when I checked your archives and couldn't read more about Mary C. Snow, an educator in Kanawha County, West Virginia Schools for more than fifty years and the first African-American principal in the area. By contrast, WCHS television still has a January  video online. Perhaps that's because Wes Armstead, now Managing Editor at the station remembers Snow as one of his teachers.

Mary Snow passed away in January at the age of 97.  Now, as you report, many in the community have asked that West Side Elementary School be renamed in her honor as a remembrance of her dedication to the community's children. And yet, reading the virulent comments on the articles, I'm wondering how many folks know in any depth about the accomplishments of Ms. Snow and her importance in the history of Charleston and of West Virginia.

As the December 19 editorial in The Daily Mail noted of the School Board's 3-2 not to rename the school,

It's a crying shame, and a missed opportunity to teach history.

Snow, who died in January at age 97, was a shining example of the power of public education.

The school should have been named for her - not so much because it would properly have honored her, but because it would have extended her teaching career.

Nothing would have pleased her more.

Born in 1913, the oldest of seven children in a poor family, Snow lost her father to violence when she was 13. Her mother took in laundry to support her children.

But Mary C. Snow overcame poverty and racism to graduate from West Virginia State College and earn a master's degree from the University of Cincinnati.

She went on to serve as a teacher, principal and inspiration on the West Side for more than five decades.

Like West Side educator Isom Cabell before her, she changed history.Snow's story resonates as strongly today as it did when her generation was in elementary school.

As my friend filmmaker Jordan Freeman noted on facebook, "It's very representative of WV government's disrespect of its own citizens that the school board won't name the school after a well-respected community teacher, a small thing in the scheme of things, but a very clear example of unresponsive state government."

Community leaders including Reverend Watts are circulating a petition that already had 500 signatures as of December 15, according to your paper.

Jordan is planning a petition on Change.org (the same site that Molly Katchpole used to used to persuade Bank of America to cancel its $5 debit card fees. Jason explains, "They've been doing great on-the-ground organizing to get this name change, as the tip of the iceberg about basic community respect. An online petition will hopefully help further that effort." (I'll include a link when the petition is online.)

The Gazette has special reports which open its archives on scoundrels such as bank robber Roy Plummer and disgraced politician Jerry Mezzatesta. Also on some of the scourges that let outsides stereotype WV and Appalachia, in general, as benighted: drug overdoses, mining disasters, mountaintop removal. How about a special report on one of its outstanding assets, Mary C. Snow?  A good place to start might be the articles on the current controversy, as well as your obituary and the February 16, 1996 interview and the March 24, 1996 story on Ms. Snow's role in the origins of unity day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is reputed to have said, "Sin writes histories, goodness is silent." Please don't prove him right.

SB 1751: If coal ash is so safe, the utility and coal company executives should eat it!

If you were to believe the above coal ash "facts" circulated by the American Coal Ash Association 's Educational Foundation, coal ash is safe.

Or, "Coal ash offers our society extraordinary environmental and economic benefits without harm to public health and safety when properly managed." One wonders who is going to make sure things are "properly managed?" Not the Environmental Protection, if that group and the coal companies have their way, right now they're pushing hard for passage of S. 1751 to stop the EPA's plans to regulate coal ash, especially the Democratic senators from the states of North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Montana and Alaska, all of whom are undecided on S. 1751. This despite the legitimate arguments that:

•     S.1751 endangers the health and safety of thousands of communities: it will prevent the EPA from ever revisiting a federal coal ash rule even if it is found that coal ash dumps pose an even greater threat.
•     S.1751 is a dangerous bill: it would allow the construction of coal ash dumps that don’t meet drinking water standards for arsenic, lead and other pollutants.
•     S.1751 will cost American jobs: An October 2011 study by a Tufts University senior economist Frank Ackerman (email, bio)  found that strong coal ash regulations, such as the one proposed by the EPA in 2010, would generate 28,000 jobs annually.
•     S.1751 will hurt recycling: once coal ash is dumped into water, which this bill would allow by permitting the construction of new coal ash ponds, it cannot be recycled.
•     S.1751 fails to address the current threat: this bill will not phase out dangerous ash ponds or prevent another tragedy like the coal ash spill in Tennessee in 2008.
•     Coal ash is hazardous to our health: the cancer risk from drinking water contaminated by arsenic near some coal ash ponds is 1 in 50, which is 2,000 times greater than the EPA’s acceptable risk level
•     Coal ash is a national problem: it is the second largest industrial waste stream in the U.S.

Emily Enderly, also at Earth Justice, sent me a chart that compares the presence  or absence of regulatory requirements for coal ash under four different regulatory schemes:

(1) EPA’s proposed subtitle C (special waste) rule;
(2) EPA proposed subtitle D (nonhazardous waste) rule;
(3) the municipal solid waste (household trash) regulations found in 40 C.F.R Part 258.
(4) Coal Ash Bill (H.R. 2273 (passed 267 - 144 on October 14) which is identical to S. 1751

I've set up a link on google docs where you can view, print and/or download it:

Comparison of Coal Ash Regulation under Four RCRA Regulatory Schemes

If you don't want to register for google and would like a copy of the chart, email me.

Background information:

• Senate Bill 1751 as introduced
• Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Members
• Senate Bill 1751 Sponsors
• Senate Bill 1751 Status  (may not be up to date if we've got insider info)
• H.R. 2273, as introduced to Senate
• Senate contact list

Please remember that if you live near an existing or proposed coal ash dump, you can sign on to the letter below being organized by Environmental Integrity  by sending your name and address-- including city, state and zip code-- in an email  to Sam Flenner <samf.environmentalintegrity@gmail.com > and cc LaToya Archibald < latoya.s.archibald@gmail.com> by noon, December 12 Eastern Time. If someone doesn't have email, you can send  their name, address, city state and zip code (Phone and email optional) along w. the copy below.  And if you're lucky enough not to have this problem pass this on to others who might.

No matter where you live, you can  email, fax or phone your Senator to tell them that coal ash is dangerous and SHOULD be regulated, vote AGAINST Senate bill 1751.

Okay, here's that form and  letter...

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DON’T FORGET US LETTER PERMISSION

The following give their permission to (name local sponsor org) to include their names name and addresses on the letter entitled Don’t Forget Us addressed to members of the US Senate.  They and their family are My are directly impacted by lax state disposal safeguards of coal combustion waste.  They urge their federal Legislators to support the EPA’s rulemaking process under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and oppose any actions or legislation that would impede the EPA rulemaking process to set common-sense safeguards for the disposal of this waste.

Name: ____________________________________

Address: __________________________________ 

City: _____________ State: ___ Zip Code _______ 

Phone: ____________________ (optional)     

        

Email: ____________________ (optional)             

*


October 20, 2011
US Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator ____:

We understand that you may soon vote on a bill that would leave oversight of coal ash dumps to the states, and prevent EPA from taking action against polluters who threaten our air and groundwater. We are referring to S. 1751, which is identical to the industry-backed bill that cleared the House of Representatives on October 14. We know Congress has already heard from industry lobbyists, big contributors, and state bureaucrats. We live near these dumps, and put up with their pollution year after year. Please hear our voices.

We know what it is like to suffer through the daily onslaught of blowing ash, drink water from faucets contaminated with ash leachate, and see our wetlands and creeks poisoned with toxic metals like arsenic. We have complained again and again about the endless noise, dust and pollution from trucks dumping coal ash near us while we become more stressed out or sick and the value of our property plummets, with no real response from our states.

Some of us are also joining this letter because a new ash dump has been proposed nearby or because we are concerned about the growing threat of coal ash in our area and its impact on our health and the quality of life in our community. More than two years ago, we were promised that the US Environmental Protection Agency would finally set national standards to clean up these sites, and close the most dangerous ones.

Now we face legislation that would stop EPA in its tracks, and replace real standards with imaginary state “plans” that polluters could ignore without fear of enforcement by EPA. After what is already known about the danger from storing millions of tons of coal ash in unlined ponds, why would you tie the government’s hands from ever stopping this practice?

Do our lives matter to you?

Is protecting coal ash “recycling” from a “stigma” more important than our health or the quality of our water? Even those who believe “stigma” is real cannot seriously argue that shielding leaking dumps from EPA enforcement somehow makes recycling easier. And ash mixed with other wastes in leaking ponds – now a common practice – cannot be recycled at all.

What will you accomplish by requiring federal and state bureaucrats to review, and then approve, disapprove, and reapprove state plans that can never actually be enforced by EPA against polluters? If your own family’s drinking water was being contaminated, would you think haggling over “plans” the right response?
States have had decades to improve their management of these dumpsites, and have done nothing – or next to nothing – as contamination has spread, even after the Kingston dam collapse manifested the problem. We know good, hard-working people in our state agencies, but budget cuts, political pressure, the power of local polluters, and the lack of any serious oversight or enforcement from EPA make their job impossible.

Put yourself in our place. What if you lived near a power plant’s landfill or ash pond like we or our neighbors do, and found out that the water you and your children drink may be unsafe to drink? How long would you want to wait for your state agency to do something about the problem? Three years? Five years? Ten? We have waited that long, and are waiting still.

As the Americans who live next to our nation’s ash dumps, our opinions should matter. These dumps should have permits that we can comment on. We should be able to object to any permit or plan that threatens our lives and property, and the government should be given a deadline to respond to our concerns. Dumps that contaminate groundwater should be closed, and the groundwater cleaned up. And EPA should be able to crack down on polluters – without having to wade through endless “planning” —or the bill will mean nothing.

As you consider this legislation, please don’t forget about us. We are not against the coal industry. We simply want laws that protect people and that they be enforceable. We appreciate your time and consideration.
Sincerely,